By way of example, a poultry processing line is disclosed in EP-B-1139769, which indicates the use of pivot arms to select whether a processing unit is required to operate on a passing poultry carcass or not. The selection whether or not to process the poultry carcass can be the result of a very diverse decision process and be based for instance on quality control, veterinarian inspection, weight selection, an intended type of end-product for the poultry carcasses, or any possible combination of such decisions.
A problem of the prior art solution with pivot arms that are to be placed in a desired position to either have the poultry carcasses move in concert and in dose vicinity with a processing unit, or to bypass the poultry carcasses along such processing unit, is that this solution is not particularly suited for high-speed processing lines. The risk is more than imminent, when higher speeds are applied, that an unintentional yet disastrous jamming will occur of the conveyed poultry when the pivot arm has not yet reached its final position but is somewhere in between.
The applicant has been faced with this problem of the prior art solution for at least a decade and has now come up with an alternative which is very suited for high-speed applications, which is versatile in the way it may be implemented, and is elegant in the way it combines robustness with simplicity.